So I've finally had it with Joel Kotkin. Joel Kotkin is, of course, the Los Angeles pundit who loves to be hated by planners. Last week in the Los Angeles Times Sunday opinion section . Kotkin flung around a lot of very selective facts and kinda-truths in order to make the arg

Even Orange County is going urban. The latest evidence is Lennar's "Central Park West" project – almost 1,400 condominiums, plus a little retail and office space, on a 43-acre site just off the Jamboree offramp of the 405 Freeway in Irvine. I visited the construction site on Mond

The California Environmental Quality Act has been blamed for holding up affordable housing, economic development, urban revitalization and public works projects. This year, however, marks the first time that CEQA has ever held up the state budget.

So not everybody thinks downtown Long Beach is a better place than downtown L.A. But at least everybody agrees Fresno has the worst big-city downtown in California. We stirred things up recently when we ranked California's big-city downtowns . People in Long Beach loved us, while

OK, I'm totally obsessed with www.walkscore.com . This is one of those Google map manipulations – created by three Seattle residents – that allows you to plug in any address and get a walkability score of that location somewhere between 0 and 100. (It also shows you a map of all

I recently spent the better part of three days in the eastern Nevada town of Ely. For those of you not current on your Nevada geography, Ely is the largest town on a 400-mile stretch of Highway 50 through Nevada and Utah known as the "Loneliest Highway in America." In other words

What's the economic engine of the 21st Century? It's not exploitation of natural resources – which, according to one recent report, accounts for only 5% of our nation's wealth. It's not factory-style production – that's only another 18%. It's "intangible capital" – our education,

During a recent visit with my family, I vowed never again to drive my car to work. Well, at least as little as possible. They looked at me as if I was crazy. When I told them how much I enjoyed walking to work and nearby shops, they were speechless.

There are few places more exciting than the pulsing downtown of a big city. There is a vitality and diversity that is palpable. Sure, it might be kind of noisy and dirty and crowded. But there is so much going on � commerce, entertainment, education, travel, socializing � tha

Sixty million Californians? Even people who think far into the future haven't given that one much thought. Demographers are pretty accustomed to thinking that there might be 50 million Californians one day. But last week the state's demographers came out with the prediction that

Sometimes even journalists get it right.

There's a downturn in the real estate development market. Does that mean we'll soon see cities in California cutting development impact fees as well? The pressure is building. Development projects that made economic sense a year or two ago – even with high impact fees – don't "pe